Lit [Moviepilot] The 5 Worst and Weirdest Moments in the Star Wars Expanded Universe

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/01...erse-2560989?lt_source=external,manual,manual

Pretty cool read. Of course, Jaxxon takes his usual place on lists such as this. I personally think Jaxxon is cool, and I liked him quite a bit (well, by '70s Marvel standards anyway). I always thought Don-Wan Kihotay to be much weirder conceptually and more cringeworthy!

Boba Fett's training of Jaina is also brought up, and appropriately so, yet I don't really agree with the angle the author took on it. She seems to write as if Jaina is a teenager or adolescent of some sort and under her dad's care still. But by this point in time, Jaina is in her 30s and fully capable of making her own decisions, even if it does involve paling up with Daddy's old-timey nemesis in order to learn how to murder her own twin brother. Not that this isn't weird or problematic, but it wasn't exactly Han's role to forbid his nearly-Jedi-Master-caliber daughter from undergoing whatever training she chose, as nonsensical as it may have seemed (both IU and OoU).

What do you all think of this list?

 

Pavan is out of place here.

He wasn't the best developed character, but this list is obviously written by somebody who just thought it was supposed to be "dark and gritty" and doesn't pick up on the noir beats which remained intact through the first couple books.

I mean, you gotta appreciate I-5. I also love that Jax Pavan's name is perfect when you restructure it to sound like a 40's private eye ("Jack Spaven").

 

Yeah, Jax was a surprising choice for this list, I agree. I mean I personally have always thought the Coruscant Night series was overrated, but even I wouldn't include him on this list. Maybe I-5, though. (Seriously, a Force-sensitive droid? That never jived well with me!)

 

Why even bother talking about clickbait articles like this?

 

Why not?

It's not really that clickbait-ish, and I've seen discussions in this forum on similar articles, so I figured I'd give it a go too.

 

And that's the problem I have Rew!

There's been numerous 'the EU is crap' articles and all variations on the theme over the last year, read one and you've read them all.

But, most of us posting here over the years did so because we liked that EU, despite its flaws! So why inflict these kind of quickly written, attention-grabbing articles that basically slag off something we mostly enjoyed on ourselves again and again?

 

Part of the reason I posted it is that she seems like she actually is a fan of the EU and is just posting some of her grievances (and she even encourages people to read the "Legends" line!). Even the things she decries are not outright rants--she does say some good things about them too. I thought it was a fairly balanced take on the whole, even though I disagreed with a few things she said. Hence why I posted. I also see her interacting with comments below the article to ameliorate some of her views. So I don't see her as slagging off--no more than most fans in Lit do anyway.

Anyway, if you don't like it, why do you have to post in this thread anyway?

 

Touche.

If there hadn't been so many of the damn things I likely wouldn't be so irritated by it, but as it is....

EDIT: I'll have to take a look at the comments, generally not reading them is a good idea but as you've said there's some more interesting stuff in them....

EDIT 2: Damn, the way they've structured the comment section is weird.

 

...These statements aren't exactly lining up.

 

lol jax pavan

michael reaves was living out his star wars fantasies

I guess it's a good thing the author of the article didn't read any of Stackpole's work.

 

Well, the latter is more what do you think about the points the writer made, whereas the former is about the legitimacy of this thread's existence at all (which I admittedly wasn't expecting to be challenged).

In other words, what I was saying was, "What do you all think about what the article writer is saying here?" and not so much, "What do you think about me making this thread?"

So there is a subtle but important distinction there!

 

I never take these lists seriously if they include Jaxxon. He's like the go-to "the EU is silly/stupid/weird" reference for every article. He's the example EVERYONE who barely knows or doesn't know the EU uses to prove their "obscure" cred. But he's not even that weird or stupid if you really know the EU.

Come back when your list includes Mount Sorrow, the Sun King, the Jeby, the book where Han is suspected of bombing the Senate with his wife inside, and The Dreams of Cody Sunn-Childe.

 

no cole fardreamer?

I mean he's the biggest mary sue right?

 

and IG-88 becoming the Death Star core

 

No, that's Taria Damsin.

 

I mean Jax Pavan style mary sue. Not real mary sue. Whatever definition that article writer is using. I'm not really sure what it is!

 

That's it. That's the pinnacle. That's at the very heart of what was wrong with the EU. I'm disappointed there wasn't another layer of retcon in which IG-88 has actually convinced himself that he controls it whereas in fact he doesn't.

 

yeah it's a shame that didn't come into play in the Denningverse somehow.

 

I think if you put a noir-inspired protagonist in something, he's gonna come across as a Mary-Sue, because they're always written somewhat impractically omni-talented. That's sorta grandfathered in.

(But again, admittedly, not developed as well as it could have been... Hell, he couldn't even make them first-person...)

 

Exactly how I feel. It's obnoxious when wookieepedia says, "it's good for the Empire that the DSII was destroyed because otherwise IG-88 would have taken over the galaxy."

 

The oddly teal-haired, cancer-riddled, came-out-of-nowhere girlfriend of Obi-Wan? Yeah, how did she not make that list?

 

People said "Emperor's black bones." That's weird. Weirder than a big green rabbit, a talking raccoon or a squirrel girl. Why don't people talk about how weird a phrase "Emperor's black bones" is?

 

sithspit

 

Up until the point when Marvel took back the franchise, when Jaxxon became the reference every interviewer had to demonstrate how much they loved Marvel's original Star Wars run and how great it would be if he was brought back, because Marvel obviously can do no wrong.

 

we need an anthropomorphic mouse in the new series